The Dance (76-80)

To illustrate, I should like to tell you about the cat-calls of a certain populace that is not slow to mark such points. The people of Antioch, a very talented city which especially honours the dance, keep such an eye upon everything that is done and said that nothing ever escapes a man of them. When

In the next place, the dancer must by all means be agile and at once loose-jointed and well-knit, so as to bend like a withe as occasion arises and to be stubbornly firm if that should be requisite.

That dancing does not differ widely from the use of the hands which figures in the public games—that it has something in common with the noble sport of Hermes and Pollux and Heracles, you may note by observing each of its mimic portrayals.

Herodotus says that what is apprehended through the eyes is more trustworthy than hearing;[*] but dancing possesses what appeals to ear and eye alike.

Its spell, too, is so potent that if a lover enters the theatre, he is restored to his right mind by seeing all the evil consequences of love; and one who is in the clutch of grief Jeaves the theatre in brighter mood,

surcease from sorrow and anger

Now that I have spoken of the strong points of dancers, let me tell you also of their defects. Those of the body, to be sure, I have already set forth; those of the mind I think you will be able to note with this explanation. Many of them, through ignorance—for it is impossible that they should all be clever—exhibit dreadful solecisms, so to speak, in their dancing. Some of them make senseless movements that have nothing to do with the harpstring, as the saying goes; for the foot says one thing and the music another. Others suit their movements to the music, but bring in their themes too late or too soon, as in a case which I remember to have seen one time. A dancer who was presenting the birth of Zeus, with Cronus eating his children,